...What the Hell Is That Crazy Bitch?
The film studio complex.
Tension and excitement tore through Sua in a single wild churn. A mock shoot. In any ordinary life, it was a thing she would never have lived to see—so far beyond her that even she caught herself wondering whether any of this was actually real.
But there was no pulling out now. She had no wish to, either.
Still, killing time had not been difficult at the start. She had her most precious friend for that. All she had to do was fiddle with her phone.
She had tossed it out as a playful little probe, but of course it wasn't believed.
Maybe because the hour was so early, even the group chat that was usually a racket sat strangely quiet, and in the end Sua was reduced to wandering the online communities.
Ugh, why is Kim Yu-han getting this much hype?
If there was a reason, Sua knew it. An unfinished role had finally been filled—who wouldn't be curious? All it meant was that her shoulders had grown heavier.
In any case, Special Task Force 808 was drawing far more attention than she had ever imagined, and the single hottest question of all was Kim Yu-han's identity. In practice, the fire was blazing over Sua herself.
She did not get to stay on her phone for long.
A horn blared, long and low. Cars began filing in one after another, a procession with no end to it, and right before her eyes the parking lot started to fill.
...Everyone's a pro, is that it? They even park well.
Every vehicle that came in finished parking without a single crooked corner, like something snapping into formation in the army. And that, even though every kind of car had gathered without discrimination. It was precisely why Sua had no choice but to grow more tense.
I am a person who would not flinch if a meteor fell. I am a person who could stand with elegance even in the moment the world ends....
She turned the words over with a fair amount of worry, but there was a small mercy in it. Not a single person actually came toward her. Even when eyes happened to meet, the other party was usually the first to look away, and anyone speaking to Sua was rarer still. If anything, they seemed full to bursting with things to say among themselves.
"Hey, hey. Which way are you headed?"
"Gotta set up. We're not using Studio 2 today, right?"
"Turn around. Heard they're scrapping the whole thing for the outdoor sets today."
Just like that, the space grew loud in an instant, and thanks to the noise Sua could watch in peace. Whatever filled those big, pitch-black bags was probably high-end equipment, and the figures striding ahead of long strings of staff—people whose very air was different—were the actors. Unexpectedly, the time passed well enough just from looking.
For Sua, everything was a first. This place was another world.
The people were not working in silence, either. Hands and feet stayed busy, and still they did not forget to let the words out.
"So who the hell is Kim Yu-han?"
"No idea. But we'll be able to confirm it today, right?"
Here and there, nothing but Kim Yu-han.
Kim Yu-han. That's me....
"They must've cast this one with ridiculous standards."
"Did you hear? People were out here guessing Jo Il-hyeon and everything. But Jo Il-hyeon actually auditioned and got shot down."
"What? For real?"
"Shh. It's a secret, idiot."
From then on, every time the name Kim Yu-han came up, Sua's body gave a little flinch. Was this what it felt like to become a wanted fugitive? Like she ought to step forward and explain herself?
Ugh, I'm shaking. I'm shaking.
She forced the trembling down, even if she had to do it through imagination. In that imagined place she lay at ease, rubbing her cheek into the belly of a rabbit plush—and even that failed to settle her, so she went so far as to imagine squishing its ears without mercy.
And at last, when she came to stand at Writer Lee Geumsuk's side, the people posted all around her like a fence looked at Sua and only Sua. She had no choice but to go rigid. Every one of those eyes felt like a camera, and their lenses were taking her in, asking what kind of character a person like her was supposed to be.
Frozen solid, she chanted it to herself.
Sua, you have to introduce yourself. Sua, you have to introduce yourself. Sua, you have to introduce yourself.
What rose at the same time was a message she had seen on some other day.
Yes. If it was the importance of managing an image, she had learned it to the bone in that moment. This was a first meeting. In other words, an opportunity—a chance to show these people the character called Sua exactly as she wanted her shown.
Sua took off her cap and offered a greeting, having scraped together every bit of courage she had.
The voice that came out was sharp enough to startle even the one who had produced it.
The air around her grew quieter still. Somehow sheepish, Sua jammed the cap she had just removed back down, low and tight. It was around then that she realized her mistake.
I'm going to lose it. I even introduced myself backwards.
But the words were already out. People had heard exactly how Sua introduced herself, and they had not forgotten, and because of it she only drew more eyes.
"Kim Yu-han, playing Lee Sua?"
"That was on purpose, right? Introducing themself the wrong way around?"
"Confidence that the immersion's already done?"
"Bold. That's an introduction even the veteran actors can't pull off."
The camera crew at their posts, the directing team turning over the staging, the actors cast in other roles—every last one of them, without exception, was stunned.
Why is the mood like this. I'm shaking. If I hadn't been wearing a mask, I would have died. Sua thought it while hiding the fine tremor at the corner of her mouth.
Only Writer Lee Geumsuk, PD Choi Heewon, and Seo Yeon-ju reacted differently. The corners of their mouths were lifted, their gazes deep and lingering, as if they were enjoying the whole situation like a piece of entertainment.
The mock-shoot set had fallen into a quiet that had no business arriving.
"You all got a good look, didn't you? That's the Kim Yu-han you've been waiting for."
Writer Lee Geumsuk broke the silence. Only then did the people around her manage the faces of those just barely climbing out of deep thought.
"Let's get moving. Everyone, to your positions."
After that, as the real preparations for the shoot got underway, the people who had only just come to their senses began to speak one after another, and the racket was no small thing.
"That person—no joke, is that actually Kim Yu-han?"
"Weren't they a parking attendant?"
"For a parking attendant... the face is way too striking. But if you ask whether I've ever seen them act, absolutely not."
"You saw that nerve. Not a joke. Terrifying."
"...The costume looks way too comfortable. I don't think this is going to work."
Whoever you asked, the impression was the same. Confusion.
"She's a woman, though? Even though Kim Yu-han is a male role."
"This isn't the marketing team pulling a hidden-camera prank, is it?"
"That actually tracks."
"Either way, this isn't a part you just stick anybody in, right? Everyone remembers the clause in the contract about the mock shoot?"
"Of course we remember."
The problem was that every bit of that murmuring reached Sua's ears as well. Naturally, she had no choice but to listen with her ears pricked.
Was there something important written in the contract?
All that remained in her head was that outrageous figure: several thousand dollars per episode. The rest of those difficult words? She had no idea!
Fortunately, the right answer came out of someone else's mouth.
"After this mock shoot, if they decide you don't fit, the contract gets torn up on the spot. The ones who do fit, though, get their terms raised."
...!
Sua startled all by herself, careful not to let it show. The mock shoot mattered far more than she had thought.
Absolutely no mistakes. Be careful with everything. Everything.
In the middle of it, someone came up and spoke to her first.
"Hello, Sua. No—wait. Should I be calling you Yu-han?"
"Yes. Yes?"
She had answered yes without a thought, then hurriedly echoed it, but it was already too late. She had agreed.
"Most productions just do a table read and move on, so a mock shoot feels a little unfamiliar, doesn't it? What were you doing before dramas?"
"Soccer, baseball, golf, swimming... anything."
"Ah. Right. Is that so...."
Avoid lying, but keep every answer as short as possible. That was Sua's strategy. Let a conversation run long, and it was all too easy to get her tail stepped on. Of course, the result was that she became something even harder to approach.
"She's got her guard all the way up. Is that just how she is?"
"Seonil's definitely going to give her an earful."
"What was that about having done anything? Oh. Don't tell me she introduced herself straight out of Kim Yu-han's character profile? That bit about being a genius in every field."
"...She is not kidding with the immersion. Method acting or what."
"Why does this feel shaky right from the start."
"Writer Lee and PD Choi must have a reason for bringing her."
And while the talk refused to break—
"All right! Let's begin the mock shoot! Fine weather today!"
It was the shout of PD Choi Heewon, enormous as a boulder. A cry packed full of fighting spirit. That was how much the moment mattered.
At last, the mock shoot began.
They were filming the scenes in the script that stood out like points of contention, and the very first was something else. It had taken on the full weight of everyone's expectations. Sua felt it too. This was a scene that held Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil in a single frame.
"Whoa, Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil right from the first scene?"
"Beautiful day for it. A real feast for the eyes."
"Who needs eye drops? This is medicine for the eyes."
Sua focused, of course.
No joke, right from the opening scene. And I'm up next....
The next turn was none other than hers. If she didn't want the comparison to fall the wrong way, she badly needed to study what the actors ahead of her were doing.
Kang-cheol enters headquarters. Yun-jin greets him as if she has been waiting.
Special Task Force 808.
The story begins when Lee Kang-cheol is assigned to the 808. It is a department that moves only against criminals who must be arrested within twenty-four hours, and the difficulty of the work is extreme. So it becomes the object of everyone's longing, and at the same time a posting no one wants to be sent to in person.
Kang-cheol, a man of principle, is assigned to the 808. The reason is simple. They want him to take on a mad dog that no one else can easily handle.
"What would you have me do."
Kim Seonil, in the role of Lee Kang-cheol, let the line fall. A germaphobe, and Lee Kang-cheol a man of principle—in Sua's view, a thoroughly fitting match.
"In a hurry, aren't you. People don't usually start with that. You know?"
Seo Yeon-ju, playing Ha Yun-jin, answered at her ease. In this project she had taken the role of captain of the 808, and she had reached a height where looks alone could persuade you of a character upright beyond measure.
Lee Kang-cheol blinked, quiet.
"It seems there was something you were hoping to hear."
"Of course! Obviously. Aren't you curious? Why a high-performing elite like you would end up in a department like this, as if you'd been sent into exile."
"Because I have a use, I expect. That is what I assumed."
"That's right. Just handle one mad dog for us, Kang-cheol."
"A mad dog?"
"Yeah. A mad dog that tears into a criminal like you wouldn't believe. Not a real dog, of course. A person. Much more dangerous. The name is Kim Yu-han."
Kim Seonil and Seo Yeon-ju had melted completely into the roles they carried, and the reaction around them was, of course, pure admiration. When Sua glanced about, more than a few people wore smiles of satisfaction.
Mm.
Sua, though, had her head cocked at a crooked angle, because she herself had become something far too different from before.
The part this scene needs to land is...
Lee Kang-cheol is a man everyone around him trusts, yet he himself trusts no one. That had to come through, and right now Kim Seonil was expressing it well.
...But why do I know that?
Was it because she had already lived through every role?
Sua felt as if she had become some omniscient presence set over the world of Special Task Force 808. How each character ought to move, what they ought to say, even which expression they ought to wear—all of it had already been calculated. It was not a calculation that existed because she had meant to make it. It simply happened on its own.
Now the last actor just has to close it out cleanly.
That was when it happened.
"Captain, it's urgent! I think you need to see this!"
The instant another actress stepped into the space of the performance.
"...No. What are you doing. You can't act like that."
Sua had murmured it before she even knew her mouth was moving.
Silence.
A heartbeat later, the shoot stopped.
Silence.
It took only a split second for every gaze to turn on Sua.
...hk.